Last fall, Joe Maruschak was among the skeptics concerning RAIN, the state-backed Regional Accelerator and Innovation Network that wants to help create startups and jobs in the southern Willamette Valley.

Back then, he and others at the Fertilab Thinkubator business incubator he co-founded in Eugene “were shadow boxing a ghost,” he said. They wondered, “What is RAIN doing? An incubator? An accelerator?”

They just knew RAIN was making it hard to raise funds for Fertilab because potential donors inevitably would ask, “What about RAIN?”…

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The 10-member board overseeing RAIN, the Regional Accelerator and Innovation Network, in the south Willamette Valley pulls expertise from private industry, as well as from local government and universities. The majority of votes on the board will be held by the people with business experience.

The so-called “ex-officio” directors, chosen because of their positions, include Corvallis Mayor Julie Manning; Eugene Mayor Kitty Piercy; Rick Spinrad, Oregon State University vice president of research; and Kimberly Andrews Espy, University of Oregon vice president of research and innovation….

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RAIN, the Regional Accelerator and Innovation Network that aims to help businesses start, grow and create jobs in the southern Willamette Valley, is gaining traction and hopes soon to start tapping the $3.75 million the Oregon Legislature approved for the project nearly a year ago.

Its executives and board are in place. It has filed the paperwork to be a nonprofit organization. Sixteen companies are in the hybrid incubator/accelerator in Corvallis, and Eugene hopes to launch its accelerator by June.

“We’re up and going,” said Eugene Mayor Kitty Piercy. Piercy, along with Corvallis Mayor Julie Manning and research officials at the University of Oregon and Oregon State University have been working on the RAIN proposal for the past two years as part of a Regional Solutions team appointed by Gov. John Kitzhaber…